What are the key areas that you and your community/learning organization can focus on to bring your vision for teaching and learning closer to reality?
Chapter 10 of Couros' book Innovators' Mindset, entitled Less is More, encompasses my vision for teaching and learning. In order for teachers to become better at their craft and for students to truly learn, the educational profession needs to live by the "Less is More" mantra. We as teachers, are too bogged down by curriculum guidelines and attainment of student achievement that we lose sight of the real purpose of education, student growth and personal/meaningful learning experiences. If we focus on a few initiatives we create more opportunities for innovation and personal learning experiences to occur. My vision for teaching and learning for my community is for us to collectively find more ways for both students and staff to (1) reflect more, (2) create more, and (3) create more opportunities for students to take ownership of their learning experiences. More time to reflect is a necessary focus because of its powerful impact to learning. Learning is personal and without time to reflect one will miss out on opportunities to deepen their understanding or make connections to bigger ideas. More time to innovate is a necessary focus because teaching with just packets and worksheets does not empower or support learners for the future. Opportunities to innovation is important because of how it builds important characteristics of an innovator's mindset. Creating more opportunities for students to have ownership of their learning is a necessary focus because it supports the significant impact that personal learning experiences have on actually learning and student growth. I picked these areas of focus because right now we are teaching in a way that is most comfortable to us and not our students. As teachers, we need to create learning experiences/environments for our students that we want for ourselves. We dread meetings that could of been emails and we hate professional development sessions that do not apply to where we are in the classroom professionally. To avoid our students going through the same cycle and truly never learning anything, we as teachers need to be more purposeful and ensure that we connect our student learning objectives to the interests of our students. Couros said it best, "Teachers learn how to teacher by watching their teachers. We often create what we experience, which means that to change what happens in our schools, the experience we create in our professional learning must change first". If we what to become better educators we have teach the way we want to be lead, and to become better leaders we have to model the way we want our teachers to teach.
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1. How do you create learning opportunities and experiences for students that focus on empowerment, as opposed to engagement?
As a previous middle school math teacher, I would use projects to empower students. Each project is designed to support a certain skill or concept that was learned in class. In particular, I assigned students to create their own map utilizing their understanding of angle relationships and parallel lines. Some students constructed three-dimensional models, other students used computer software. I was amazed at how creative my students were in their abilities to show their understanding and create the project in a way that represented who they were. Most of my project-like assignments (like the one described above) lack more creative freedom. What Couros' book taught me about empowerment opposed to engagement is that when teachers empower students, students are given freedom to learn more about what they are interested in. "Freedom is about what you can unleash. By empowering them, I'd unleashed my students' potential and allowed them to explore and make meaningful connections to the content to deepen their learning". Empowerment verse engagement, one embodies the other, when you empower students they inadvertently become engaged and the learning is more abundant. The projects that I assigned in the past were more geared to engagement rather than empowerment, I hope in the future I can really revamp how I implement projects so I can change how my students learn and ultimately empower them to learn freely. 2. Do you have students evaluate their own work in your classroom? What kind of learning does this produce? The most prominent way I have students evaluate their own work is through test corrections. Students are given the opportunity to analyze their mistakes and write about what did they wrong and why. I see this as such a powerful learning tool because often times students learn more from their mistakes. I also provide students opportunities to evaluate their peers or other students work. This supports one of the 8 characteristics of the innovative mindset, problem finders. Mathematic students are encouraged to evaluate and critique reasonings of others, this allows students to look at problem solving with a different lens. What possibilities do you see with the maker movement in your own practice? Additionally, what challenges might you most expect?
Before I start responding to the reflection questions for this week, I wanted to share my thoughts about the first chapter of the Innovator's Mindset book. I have enjoyed reading this book, it has been easy to read and follow along with. While reading chapter 1, I couldn't help but think how the old saying "don't reinvent the wheel" is such a contradiction to the mindset of this book. Teachers need to know that it is okay to be risk-takers again and try new things in the classroom, the "old way" isn't the only way. I haven't even started chapter 2 but this book has some great insight about the future of education.
1. Who are your students? What do you do to meet them in their world of technology?
My students come with a wide variety of backgrounds and preconceived notations about education and its value. Some students are first generation college bound and others are planning to follow in the footsteps of their other siblings or parents. All of my students, however, are very engrossed in staying connected. Social media has been an outlet for them to use to be creative, gain friends, learn new things, and foster a sense of belonging. All very similar demographics to other teachers. How I meet my students in their world of technology is mainly in the form of building relationships. I too use social media to stay connected with my students outside of the classroom. I created a "teacher-friendly" social media account for my students to see me as a human as well as a teacher. I believe it is important for my students to see who I am aside from being their math teacher (ie. my interests, my family, my hobbies, and the fun things other students in my classes are doing). Creating this social media account has definitely helped me build relationships with my students because they are more willing to share their thoughts and ideas, and be challenged. Outside of my social media, I use online games like Kahoot to engage students in the content they are learning, and students are constantly using graphing calculators or applications to learn about how different functions behave through manipulation. 2. Do you feel that your instruction is suited for the 21st century student? My instruction is not suited for the 21st century. The main reason I embarked on this journey to learn more about educational technology was to become a better teacher for the new generation of students. Even though technology is still not accessible to everyone, technology has become the "new normal". Technology has become such a routine in everyone's daily life that there is a high demand to integrate technology into daily classroom instruction, and I want to learn more about it. As a mathematics teacher, I have always struggled with when technology is most appropriate and meaningful (to integrate), verses, when tradition paper and pencil are better suited. I lean more towards the paper and pencil because I am most comfortable with its integration, thus the reason why I feel like my instruction is not suited for the 21 century student. Aside from using graphing calculators or graphing applications, and creating online modules or quizzes, I have yet to find ways to integrate technology on a daily basis that contributes to instruction meaningfully. I feel like the methods of integration that I have used just replace the traditional methods of teaching not enhance the instruction like technology should. I enrolled in this program, in hopes to better my instruction and I am looking forward to continuing my growth. |
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